On Thin Ice by Richard Ellis The Changing World of the Polar Bear (Vintage)

Polar bears—fierce and majestic—have captivated us for centuries. Feared by explorers, revered by the Inuit, and beloved by zoo goers everywhere, they are a symbol for the harsh beauty and muscular grace of the Arctic. But as global warming threatens the ice caps’ integrity, the polar bear has also come to symbolize the environmental peril that has arisen due to harmful human practices. In the past twenty years alone, the world population of polar bears has shrunk by half. Today they number just 22,000.

Urgent and stirring, On Thin Ice is both a celebration and a rallying cry on behalf of one of earth’s greatest natural treasures.

Richard Ellis is the author of many books including The Empty Ocean (Island Press, 2003), Great White Shark (Harper Collins, 1991), Imagining Atlantis (Knopf, 1998), The Search for the Giant Squid (Lyons, 1998), Aquagenesis (Viking, 2001), and No Turning Back (Harper Collins, 2004). Ellis is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, as well as a celebrated artist whose works have been exhibited in museums worldwide.

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(At least the people were not trying to kill the bear, Ellis tells us, as slaughtering polar bears was the historic result of human-bear contact in the Arctic ever since 1553, when Europeans first came face to face with the Great Greenland bear.